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Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Contraception and capital punishment

Catholic epologists typically raise this objection to birth control:

Few realize that up until 1930, all Protestant denominations agreed with the Catholic Church’s teaching condemning contraception as sinful. At its 1930 Lambeth Conference, the Anglican church, swayed by growing social pressure, announced that contraception would be allowed in some circumstances. Soon the Anglican church completely caved in, allowing contraception across the board. Since then, all other Protestant denominations have followed suit. Today, the Catholic Church alone proclaims the historic Christian position on contraception.


According to this line of argument, the weight of Christian tradition creates a tremendous presumption against the licit use of "artificial" contraception.

But let's take a parallel case:

Turning to Christian tradition, we may note that the Fathers and Doctors of the Church are virtually unanimous in their support for capital punishment, even though some of them such as St. Ambrose exhort members of the clergy not to pronounce capital sentences or serve as executioners. To answer the objection that the first commandment forbids killing, St. Augustine writes in The City of God:
"The same divine law which forbids the killing of a human being allows certain exceptions, as when God authorizes killing by a general law or when He gives an explicit commission to an individual for a limited time. Since the agent of authority is but a sword in the hand, and is not responsible for the killing, it is in no way contrary to the commandment, “Thou shalt not kill” to wage war at God's bidding, or for the representatives of the State's authority to put criminals to death, according to law or the rule of rational justice."
In the Middle Ages a number of canonists teach that ecclesiastical courts should refrain from the death penalty and that civil courts should impose it only for major crimes. But leading canonists and theologians assert the right of civil courts to pronounce the death penalty for very grave offenses such as murder and treason. Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus invoke the authority of Scripture and patristic tradition, and give arguments from reason.
Giving magisterial authority to the death penalty, Pope Innocent III required disciples of Peter Waldo seeking reconciliation with the Church to accept the proposition: “The secular power can, without mortal sin, exercise judgment of blood, provided that it punishes with justice, not out of hatred, with prudence, not precipitation.” In the high Middle Ages and early modern times the Holy See authorized the Inquisition to turn over heretics to the secular arm for execution. In the Papal States the death penalty was imposed for a variety of offenses. The Roman Catechism, issued in 1566, three years after the end of the Council of Trent, taught that the power of life and death had been entrusted by God to civil authorities and that the use of this power, far from involving the crime of murder, is an act of paramount obedience to the fifth commandment.
In modern times Doctors of the Church such as Robert Bellarmine and Alphonsus Liguori held that certain criminals should be punished by death. Venerable authorities such as Francisco de Vitoria, Thomas More, and Francisco Suárez agreed. John Henry Newman, in a letter to a friend, maintained that the magistrate had the right to bear the sword, and that the Church should sanction its use, in the sense that Moses, Joshua, and Samuel used it against abominable crimes.
Throughout the first half of the twentieth century the consensus of Catholic theologians in favor of capital punishment in extreme cases remained solid, as may be seen from approved textbooks and encyclopedia articles of the day. The Vatican City State from 1929 until 1969 had a penal code that included the death penalty for anyone who might attempt to assassinate the pope. Pope Pius XII, in an important allocution to medical experts, declared that it was reserved to the public power to deprive the condemned of the benefit of life in expiation of their crimes.
Summarizing the verdict of Scripture and tradition, we can glean some settled points of doctrine. It is agreed that crime deserves punishment in this life and not only in the next. In addition, it is agreed that the State has authority to administer appropriate punishment to those judged guilty of crimes and that this punishment may, in serious cases, include the sentence of death.


DECLARATION OF THE HOLY SEE
TO THE FIRST WORLD CONGRESS
ON THE DEATH PENALTY 
The Holy See has consistently sought the abolition of the death penalty and his Holiness Pope John Paul II has personally and indiscriminately appealed on numerous occasions in order that such sentences should be commuted to a lesser punishment, which may offer time and incentive for the reform of the guilty, hope to the innocent and safeguard the well-being of civil society itself and of those individuals who through no choice of theirs have become deeply involved in the fate of those condemned to death.
The Pope had most earnestly hoped and prayed that a worldwide moratorium might have been among the spiritual and moral benefits of the Great Jubilee which he proclaimed for the Year Two Thousand, so that dawn of the Third Millennium would have been remembered forever as the pivotal moment in history when the community of nations finally recognised that it now possesses the means to defend itself without recourse to punishments which are "cruel and unnecessary". This hope remains strong but it is unfulfilled, and yet there is encouragement in the growing awareness that "it is time to abolish the death penalty".
It is surely more necessary than ever that the inalienable dignity of human life be universally respected and recognised for its immeasurable value. The Holy See has engaged itself in the pursuit of the abolition of capital punishment and an integral part of the defence of human life at every stage of its development and does so in defiance of any assertion of a culture of death.


Ironically, conservative evangelicals generally uphold the historic Christian tradition on capital punishment whereas the modern magisterium bucking tradition. In both cases you have a break with venerable tradition in the 20C. 

8 comments:

  1. Not to the abortion issue I now comment, but to these words put against the Word of God and sigh, how arrogant the RCC has to have become to excel in that endeavor over God's great Work and Word:

    The See:

    "...The Pope had most earnestly hoped and prayed that a worldwide moratorium might have been among the spiritual and moral benefits of the Great Jubilee which he proclaimed for the Year Two Thousand, so that dawn of the Third Millennium would have been remembered forever as the pivotal moment in history when the community of nations finally recognised that it now possesses the means to defend itself without recourse to punishments which are "cruel and unnecessary".

    The only day and event that counts to Eternity:

    Psa 118:22 The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.
    Psa 118:23 This is the LORD's doing; it is marvelous in our eyes.
    Psa 118:24 This is the day that the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.
    Psa 118:25 Save us, we pray, O LORD! O LORD, we pray, give us success!


    To the See there shall never be success!

    To the Church success has come already!

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  2. Catholic epologists typically raise this objection to birth control:

    Few realize that up until 1930, all Protestant denominations agreed with the Catholic Church’s teaching condemning contraception as sinful. At its 1930 Lambeth Conference, the Anglican church, swayed by growing social pressure, announced that contraception would be allowed in some circumstances. Soon the Anglican church completely caved in, allowing contraception across the board. Since then, all other Protestant denominations have followed suit. Today, the Catholic Church alone proclaims the historic Christian position on contraception.

    This argument doesn't bother me too much. Sure wish I got a dollar everytime it was presented.

    Actually, I'd take the Catholic position on anti-contraception as possessing more integrity if it weren't for the fact that a large majority of Catholics practice contraception, and further, there's no ecclesial discipline for Catholics who use contraception.

    It's kind of an empty teaching that happens to be on the books. Since no enforcement is administered to violators, then the view that the doctrine is a farce is justified.

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  3. Truth, have you seen Matthew's paper on contraception in the early church?

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  4. I enjoyed reading Matthew's paper. Thanks!

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  5. Paragraph 2267 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church is very much in keeping with Augustine’s thought (http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/para/2267.htm). May God continue to fill your hearts with His love!

    In Christ,
    Pete Holter

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  6. "
    The Church also, fulfilling the role given it by Christ as the identifier and interpreter of apostolic Scripture and apostolic tradition, has constantly condemned contraception as gravely sinful.

    In Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI stated..."


    The first instance sited for as the church "constantly condemning" contraception is from 1968. Really?

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  7. “…his Holiness Pope John Paul II has personally and indiscriminately appealed on numerous occasions in order that such sentences should be commuted to a lesser punishment, which may offer time and incentive for the reform of the guilty…”

    Compare these thoughts with these others from Augustine:

    “[O]ur desire is rather that justice be satisfied without the taking of their lives […] [I]t becomes you to hearken to me as a bishop commanding with authority” (Letter 133).

    “…they had waylaid one of these and killed him, and that they had abducted another from his house and mutilated him by putting out his eye and cutting off his finger. […] I had not the slightest doubt that they would be subject to capital punishment at your hands, so I have made haste to write this letter to your Nobility, begging and praying you by the mercy of Christ, as we rejoice in your great and certain happiness, not to allow similar tortures to be inflicted on them, although, to be sure, the law cannot punish them by stoning or by cutting off a finger or plucking out an eye, acts which their cruelty made possible for them. Therefore, I am at ease about the men who have confessed these deeds that they will not suffer reciprocal treatment, but what I fear is that either they or the others who have been convicted of murder may be sentenced according to the full weight of your authority. As a bishop I warn a Christian, as a Christian I appeal to a judge not to let this happen. […] Therefore, if there were no other punishment decreed for curbing the wickedness of desperate men, extreme necessity might require that such men be put to death, although, as far as we are concerned, if no lesser punishment were possible for them, we should prefer to let them go free, rather than avenge the martyrdom of our brothers by shedding their blood. But, now that there is another possible punishment by which the mildness of the Church can be made evident, and the violent excess of savage men be restrained, why do you not commute your sentence to a more prudent and more lenient one, as judges have the liberty of doing even in non-ecclesiastical cases? […] By a monstrous crime they tore limbs from a living body; do you by a work of mercy make them apply to some useful work the wholly intact limbs which they exercised in their unspeakable deeds. They did not spare the servants of God who were preaching repentance to them; do you spare them, now that you have arrested, summoned, and convicted them. They shed Christian blood with impious sword; do you, for Christ's sake, withhold even the sword of the law from their blood. They cut short the life-span of a minister of the Church by killing him; do you lengthen the span of years for the living enemies of the Church that they may repent” (Letter 134).

    “[S]ome of them confess[ed] to the murder of one presbyter [Restitutus] […] As to the punishment of these men, I beseech you to make it something less severe than sentence of death, although they have, by their own confession, been guilty of such grievous crimes. […] I ask this out of a regard both for our own consciences and for the testimony thereby given to Catholic clemency. For this is the special advantage secured to us by their confession, that the Catholic Church has found an opportunity of maintaining and exhibiting forbearance towards her most violent enemies; since in a case where such cruelty was practised, any punishment short of death will be seen by all men to proceed from great leniency. […] [W]e will endeavour to obtain this concession from the clemency of the Emperors, so that the sufferings of the martyrs, which ought to shed bright glory on the Church, may not be tarnished by the blood of their enemies” (Letter 139).

    With love in Christ,
    Pete Holter

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